The Terra Studios or Marienfelde Studios were
film studios
A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company that makes films. Today, studios are mostly financing and distribution entities. In addition, they may have their own studio facility or facilities; howev ...
located in the
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
suburb of
Marienfelde
Marienfelde () is a locality in southwest Berlin, Germany, part of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough. The former village, incorporated according to the Greater Berlin Act of 1920, today is a mixed industrial and residential area.
Geography
The ...
.
The studios were originally a
glasshouse constructed in 1913 by the early company
Eiko Film, controlled by the
producer Franz Vogel who had previously been using the Sellerstrasse Studios of Rex Film. In the early 1920s Terra Film was founded and took over the studios from the defunct Eiko. It was known as the Terra-Glashaus during these years.
[Jung & Schatzberg p.220]
In 1930 the studio underwent major rebuilding following the acquisition of Terra by
Eugen Scotoni, and was fitted for
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
production using the
Tobis-Klangfilm system. During the consolidation of the German film industry in the 1930s under the
Nazi era
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
, Terra rose to become one of the four major companies alongside
UFA,
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
and
Tobis. It continued producing at Marienfelde until the late 1930s when the further centralisation of German film production under the
Nazi regime
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
led to the downgrading of the studios, and gave Terra access to the better-equipped Berlin studios of
Babelsberg
Babelsberg () is the largest quarter of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The neighbourhood is named after a small hill on the Havel river. It is the location of Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Park ...
,
Johannisthal and
Tempelhof
Tempelhof () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park call ...
.
References
Bibliography
* Bach, Steven. ''Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend''. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
*Kramer, Thomas & Siegrist, Dominik. ''Terra: ein Schweizer Filmkonzern im Dritten Reich''. Chronos, 1991.
* Kreimeier, Klaus. ''The Ufa Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945''.University of California Press, 1999.
* Jung, Uli & Schatzberg, Walter. ''Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene''. Berghahn Books, 1999.
German film studios
{{film-studio-stub